Why Marketing Teams and Sales Team Should Work Together

As a company, your marketing team and sales team work towards the same goal: boosting company growth and securing business. Although marketing and sales departments work towards the same goal, how they reach the goal is entirely different. Sales are the direct process which the salesperson talks directly to the customer to convince them to buy your product or service. The salesperson is the “go-to” person for your customer, should the customer have any questions or concerns about how your business can help them or what you can offer. This sales process could be quick, or it could belong. Either way, the sales person’s overall goal is to increase sales to continue growth for your business. 

Marketing works to boost the growth of your business too but in a different way. The marketing process is designed to increase brand awareness, build relationships, and maintain a positive image for your business. By doing so, the marketing team can attract new customers and maintain current customers to ensure your business is consistently growing. Your marketing team might be working on a strategy that includes blogs, social media, search engine optimization, email marketing campaigns, etc., Everything that the marketing team does should be shared with the sales team and vice versa. 

Did you know that 33% of sales and marketing teams fail to meet on a regular basis? You might be thinking…why would they? Your marketing department and sales department seem to be doing just fine on their own. Have you ever considered how collaboration between these two departments can affect your business? The July-August 2006 Harvard Business Review stated that “when the two departments collaborate, companies will see substantial improvement on important performance metrics: Sales cycles are shorts, market-entry costs go down, and the cost of sales is lower.” If you are looking to win over more customers, increase customer retention, and grow faster as a business, aligning the two departments will get you to where you want to be. 

So, what allows these teams to work so well together to produce great results? It all has to do with the sales funnel. Both teams understand the sales funnel even if they don’t understand the term. The funnel refers to what goes through the buyer’s mind before, during, and after they make a purchase.  It has to do with the awareness that there is a solution, interest in the product, the decision to buy or not to buy an action that is taken once it is purchased.

The purpose of getting these two departments to work together is to raise awareness of the brand, tone and messaging that is consistent, so potential customers choose to engage with the company and trust your company enough that they become long term, valuable customers.  Do you find that your marketing department is saying one thing and your sales department is doing another? This is an issue that can easily be resolved by alignment. 

How to Get These Departments Together 

If your company is part of that 33% that does not have regular meetings for your marketing team and sales team to come together, making the change to the align the two departments can be tricky. You may find your team is set in their ways and will need time to adjust to the changes to begin communicating between the two departments. Here are a few ways to make this adjustment a bit easier. 

Have Regular Meetings 

Like any other relationship, the relationship between your sales department and marketing department will not be successful if there is not consistent, strong communication. If you are not having regular meetings for these two departments to meet, it is never too late to start. 

In the initial meeting, it is important to identify company goals and make it clear that the two departments share a common ground when it comes to the goals. You may also find it helpful for the sales team and marketing team to work beside each other some days just to see what each team does and how it contributes to the common goal they share. 

Set Buyer Persona’s 

Once these two teams have started to align, its time to put themselves in the buyer’s shoes. Your marketing team and sales team must understand the customer’s challenges, hesitations to purchase, why they would buy your product or service, etc. Once the two departments begin doing this together, you will be able to find what it takes to win a customer over because you will have a better understanding of what the customer needs and wants. 

Share Resources

Both departments are valuable assets to your company. With that being said, they can both help each other. Your marketing department can share collateral with the sales team like blog articles, press releases, social media pages, and much more to provide potential customers with more information that could help educate the buyer and eventually turn them into a customer. On the other hand, your sales department could share valuable information they have gathered. Perhaps the target audience has shifted, or you find customers want to know certain information, your sales team should share this information to help the marketing team better target the audience. 

Whether your marketing department and sales department knows it or not, they are already working together. Your marketing team is already generating content that increases leads, and as a result, your sales team is bringing in new customers. Why not bridge the gap between the two departments to create a powerful, larger group? This process might not be easy to adjust to, which is why it is necessary to work with a professional to align the two. Expectations should be set for how these two departments work together, and a successful marketing strategy should be executed. 

Are you ready to shorten your sales cycle? The decrease in market-entry costs? Decrease sales and win more customers over? When your sales and marketing team work together, these are all possible results. For more information, contact an expert today.